Quick on the Recovery

The benefits of workouts with faster-than-usual recoveries.

In the early 1970s, University of Oregon runners did a workout in which they alternated 30-second and 40-second 200s for as long as they could handle it. "The record was 5 miles, by Steve Prefontaine," Alberto Salazar once told the Oregonian newspaper. "I think the furthest I ever made it was 4." At about the same time, Australian marathoner Rob de Castella was doing something similar: 8 x 400m at 1-2 seconds/per lap faster than 5K pace, punctuated by 200m "recoveries" that were only 15 seconds per lap slower than the intervals.

A more recent champion of briskly paced recoveries is Italian coach Renato Canova, whose trainee Moses Mosop debuted in 2:03:06 in last year's Boston Marathon and then won Chicago in course-record time. "Canova's big thing is what is most often referred to as 'alternations,'" says 2:14 marathoner Nate Jenkins, "where you run a fast speed for a recovery and a faster speed for the interval, i.e., if you have a goal 10K of 30:00, you might run 6 to 8 x 800m in 2:24 [the goal pace], with a recovery [also 800m] at 2:40." If that sounds, well, fast, it is. But so is a 30:00 10K. For a runner of that talent, Jenkins notes, the 800m recoveries in 2:40 come up at about marathon pace.

In traditional intervals, the emphasis is on the fast part of the repeat. The recoveries take a backseat and are often quite slow. But in fast-recovery training the emphasis is reversed. The repeats are modestly paced but the recoveries are far quicker than the norm.

What this means, says Kelly Sullivan, head track and cross country coach at Oregon State University, is that in this type of training, the recoveries are the most important part. "You're trying not to take your foot too much off the pedal," he says.

But it's not something you should do simply because others are doing it and it sounds tough. "The most important question about any session of training is, 'What is the purpose of this workout?'" says exercise physiologist/coach Jack Daniels. "If you can't answer that, then just go home and watch TV instead of running. Every type of training should be for some particular reason, not just to make the runner hurt."

Happily, there are several reasons why fast-recovery workouts might be beneficial. First, they allow you to introduce quick bursts of speed into training workouts early in the season, while still meeting aerobic goals by keeping your heart rate up throughout the session, says Andrew Begley, whose trainees include 10,000m Olympian Amy Begley. Later in the season, they can be used to sharpen fitness by shortening the recovery times for much harder workouts such as "mile-down" ladders (1600m, 1200m, 800m, 600m, 400m, 300m, 200m), he adds.

Fast-recovery workouts are also useful, he thinks, for athletes who struggle with traditional tempo runs. "Instead of doing a 4-mile tempo run, the athlete can do four 1-mile repeats with a 1-minute recovery," he says–an approach that Daniels has dubbed "cruise intervals."

But there's also another, even more powerful theory emerging of why fast-recovery workouts might be highly beneficial. This one involves lactate, a substance produced as an intermediate product in the muscles' normal energy-production processes.

LACTATE LOWDOWN

Runners tend to think of lactate as a metabolic poison: a byproduct of "anaerobic" running that causes their muscles to tie up in the late stages of hard races. The truth is that lactate is a fuel. At low exercise levels, it's used nearly as quickly as it's formed. But at higher paces you reach a level known as the lactate threshold, where your aerobic energy systems can no longer keep up with clearing it as quickly as you produce it.

"The higher above your lactate threshold that you run, the more lactate accumulates in your muscles and blood," says Olympic marathoner, author and exercise physiologist Pete Pfitzinger. "When you ease back below lactate threshold pace, your body uses the lactate as fuel. The theory is that by alternating running faster and slower than lactate threshold, you are training your muscles to more effectively use lactate."

If this sounds a lot like fartlek running, it is. "It's a classic fartlek," says Portland, Ore., coach Bob Williams. "The nice thing about bringing it to the track is that you can nail the paces."

"This type of training has been around for a while," admits one of fast-recovery's strongest proponents, Eugene, Ore., coach Peter Thompson. "But what has not been around has been an understanding of why it works." In fact, Thompson thinks that these new understandings are so profound that surge-and-recovery workouts should be dubbed the "new interval training."

Although there are near-endless variants, a "new" interval session might look a lot like de Castella's "Aussie quarters": a string of short repeats, interspersed by quick-paced recoveries as short as one-quarter of the interval distance. Thus, you might run sets of 400m-300m-300m-400m-where the hyphen is a float (in Thompson's terminology, a "roll-on"), typically 100m, at marathon pace or faster. Individual elements of each set could be paced at anything from 1500m to 5,000m pace, or a mix, such as 5K/3K/1500m/5K paces. Also, because the float is the finale of each repeat, each set ends with floating before heading into a more traditional recovery, such as a 1-lap jog.

In this scheme, pacing the float is critical. Thompson believes the right pace is somewhere between 10K and half marathon pace. But de Castella paced his floats at marathon pace, and Ryan Hall, who's a great fan of what he calls "Pre's 200s," likes to do the recoveries a bit slower. "I run 30s for the fast 200 and 45 to 50 for the 'out' 200," he says–though he then stretches the workout to 6 miles.

Another way to do it is by feel. When you finish the repeat, keep moving, even though your body wants to quit, and trust that when you reach the start of the next interval, the recovery will sufficiently be there to let you do it.

It also helps if you resist the temptation to exceed the interval's target pace. Your goal is to accumulate lactate, not kill yourself. And if you tame the urge for excess speed, you reduce the risk of injury, particularly for masters runners. "Most masters athletes injure themselves by going too fast on reps," Thompson says.

Another way to look at this is in terms of effort. The fast element, Sullivan says, should be done at about 85 percent of all-out effort for that particular distance. The recoveries should be at 65 percent. It turns out, he adds, that this is precisely what Pre was doing. "Physiologically, the 30 was about 85 percent [for him], and the 40 was about 65 percent," he says.

ARE FAST-RECOVERY WORKOUTS ONLY FOR FAST RUNNERS?

As the staccato beat of Pre's workout and other short-interval sets indicates, fast recovery workouts are most obviously appropriate for shorter races–and even then not for everyone. Hendrick Ramaala, winner of the 2004 New York City Marathon and owner of a 1:00:26 half marathon PR, has experimented with such workouts and concluded that they're best left to track runners. "I believe that short, intensive speed sessions with short recovery are a cause of injuries, and that long-distance runners need to avoid them as much as possible," he says.

Pfitzinger agrees that the workouts are probably most useful for elite runners in shorter races, although he extends the range upward to the half marathon. "Elite marathoners are not going fast enough to produce high amounts of lactate," he says, "so the benefit is not as great for them." Although, he notes, "There is still a benefit, particularly when competing against someone who repeatedly surges."

Hall and de Castella, however, thrived on short alternations. And some elite marathoners have also found benefit in doing something similar with their longer workouts. Salazar, for example, has recommended mid-length workouts (about 14 or 15 miles, including warm-up and cool-down), in which runners spend up to 10 miles alternating between running miles 10 seconds faster than marathon pace, and 20 seconds slower. "This," he says, "will help teach you how to relax while running for an hour or longer at a fairly substantial effort. In conventional intervals, your focus is generally on getting through the next repeat. It's possible to do so with bad form or by clenching up and gutting your way through. In the marathon, you can't get away with that... and those fast-paced recoveries will make it hard to complete if you tighten up in the early going."

Hall does something similar, although he paces it differently. "[One] of my favorite ways to incorporate this [fast-recovery training] is doing a long run alternating between a mile at marathon pace, and a mile a minute slower than marathon pace, for 20 consecutive miles," he says.

Thompson even goes so far as to suggest that pace-varying should also be applied in some tempo runs. Though, he notes, one shouldn't run everything with varying rhythm, because races are often run at steady pace. "You need to do that, to get used to it," he says.

Many of us, however, have been so conditioned to steady-paced running or traditional intervals that making the adjustment to the pace variations of fast-recovery workouts can be difficult. "College kids struggle with it initially, because most are interval-trained," Sullivan says. "It's a learned behavior and [changing it] takes time."

Pfitzinger agrees. "My experience with this type of training with non-elite runners is that you have to be careful to get the intensities right because it is easy to go too hard early in the workout and not be able to complete the session," he says. But he adds, "After one or two sessions, however, you should learn the correct intensities."

Running the Minutes

Fast-recovery training is descended from fartlek training, which means it doesn't have to be done on the track. Oregon State coach Kelly Sullivan has a workout he calls "minutes," run at alternating 85 percent and 65 percent efforts. It lasts 30 minutes, with intervals (and briskly paced recoveries) of 5 minutes, 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes, and 1 minute. Though, he notes, "You can do any kind of variation you want," including shortening the recoveries. It's not as hard as it sounds, he adds. "Ninety to 95 percent of the time, you walk away feeling like you could do more," he says